


Farewell, My Lovely

by DratTheRat



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Alain Johns: Psychic Detective, Alternate Universe, Homophobic Society, M/M, Mystery, Noir Inspired, Pre-Fall of Gilead (The Dark Tower Series), Sex, Warning: Excessive Metaphors!, angsty romance, borderline hard boiled, genre experiment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21686029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DratTheRat/pseuds/DratTheRat
Summary: A noir-inspired paranormal mystery romance in ten short chapters:As guardians of the last vestige of civilization in a dying world, the gunslingers are charged with keeping peace in Gilead.  Investigation of the more mysterious crimes falls to Alain.
Relationships: Cuthbert Allgood/Alain Johns
Comments: 46
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to Raymond Chandler, whose title I borrowed. Classic noirs are wonderful in part because of their restraint and innuendos, and I haven't quite followed that rule ... There's a lot more sex in this story than you'd see in one of his books or in one of the movies based on them. If this were a classic film noir, it would be in massive violation of the Hays Production Code.
> 
> Now complete!

The City is a poor reflection of a starry sky. Far below where I sit in my tower office, lights do twinkle here and there, but there are far too few, the gaps between them far too dark to be excused by mist or clouds. Above me, OId Mother still sparkles, easier to spot than she had been when I was just a little boy and Gilead was brighter. Now, the world has moved on. What that means for the real stars I cannot tell, but our stars, here, are going out. I’m sure there were more lights last week. 

Idle, I douse my own lamp and let myself drift.

My memories aren’t like the echoes of the past, present and future that I feel from other people and from places. They are my own, so I can separate the sweet parts from the bitter chaff, and, in them, I am capable of actions I cannot perform in waking life. They are my favorite pastime. Inside my mind, I step out of my window, and I float. There were more lights last week.

“You can’t pretend you’re working this time, sitting in the dark.”

For a moment, Bert is floating with me. His irises are black. I must have manifested an imperfect shadow of his visage when I heard his voice.

“You’re interrupting,” I complain. My memory and its accompanying sensations fade, and I am sitting with my elbows on the hard, stone windowsill.

“Perish the thought.”

I can feel Cuthbert behind me, now. He is a grating presence. Sometimes, his mind is the softest and most welcoming of all, but other times it is so closed that it might not exist. Few others could creep up on me like this, even while I indulge my memory. The light that he has brought with him is grating, too; the faint yellow glow of his candle stains the stonework of the window frame, spoiling the darkness. 

“Al,” he whispers, “come out on the town with me tonight.”

I bury the heels of my palms in my eyes and turn my chair around to look at him at last. He shimmers, then my eyes adjust, and he is only beautiful: long legs and big brown eyes and smiles like cherry wine. I know what nights out with Cuthbert are like.

“I’d rather stay here.”

Bert looks past my shoulder at the City far below. One of those lights is the tavern he likes - the one where minstrels play old love songs and the girls and boys drape themselves over his long, bony frame like limp rugs airing on a finely crafted railing. They serve cherry wine there, too.

When Cuthbert meets my eyes again, I almost miss his crooked smile. “Alright.” 

“Say thankya,” I breathe out. 

“Thankya.” Cuthbert climbs over my desk. 

He kisses me.

This isn’t the first time. He has his whims. I know what those are like, too, but I don’t seek out his company, so it has been some time since he supplied me with a fresh experience. His presence is no longer grating; I don’t mind when we stay in.

He’s made his way into my lap. His lips are on my ear. The hot steam of his breath begins to make me shiver.

“I’ll come back here again and again,” I promise.

Bert knows what I mean. “You don’t need to do that.” He exchanges his soft lips for teeth.

“Oh, so I can have you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? Sure.”

“And each day after?” 

Silence. Cuthbert’s lips are back, and they are on my neck. I am not really asking, and he knows it. I can tell, for most of him is open now, and soft. 

Not all of him, though, not on the outside. His fingers look delicate, but they are sharp and solid on my hips. The muscles in his thighs have clenched into mahogany. His skeleton is tangible beneath his smooth, warm skin. I seize the unyielding handhold of his shoulder blade beneath his untucked shirt and tug against his serrated lower spine until the hardness I am looking for presses against my belly.

“Ask me,” he hisses. 

He leans back against my hands to look at me, canting his hips. Inside his trousers, it’s the softness of his testicles against my stomach now, the roundness of the bottom of his ass. He has a few soft parts, and I love all of them: the inside of his mouth, his eyes . . . I think his boots are braced against the windowsill. 

“Ask,” he insists.

I am about to ask him to retire to the other room and fuck me when I feel it: “Someone’s coming.”

He tips forward, and his cock is pressed against me once again. His lips leave damp along my jaw. 

“It’s Roland,” I inform him. I am certain of this now. 

“So?”

I have no desire for my friend and my superior to catch me sitting in the dark with Cuthbert in my lap. Roland knows about Bert’s whims, as well, but it won’t do for him to see just how susceptible I am. This is my place of business.

“Off!” I worm my palms between our bodies so I can shove him away.

He pouts. It pleases me to take advantage of Bert’s whims when I can do so secretly, but I don’t ask for this from him, and he does not need me. His reputation as a wanton philanderer is well founded. He can find his fix with someone else tonight. Even if it were acceptable for us to be caught trading kisses, I will have no leisure time this evening. Roland is not a sociable fellow; he would not climb so many stairs so late at night to exchange niceties.

Bert pouts, but he complies and tucks his shirt back in, and so the scene that we present for our commander is only mildly incriminating. When Roland enters, Bert is sitting on the corner of the near side of my desk, and I’m tilting his candle so it reignites my lamp. 

“What brings you here at such an hour?” I inquire. “Bert was just inviting me out on the town. I have declined, and he is on his way.” I pass his candle back as though I had been lighting it for him.

Bert’s back is turned to Roland, and his eyes stab at me like a knife, but he accepts the candle. “Roland,” he acknowledges. He stands.

“Cuthbert.” Roland nods stiffly.

Bert lets loose his cherry wine smile, and he kisses Roland on the cheek and disappears down the black stairwell, unlit since oil rations took effect two years ago. It takes a long time for the light of his candle to fade. The sharp pain of his glare fades faster. It was Cuthbert’s pain, I realize. He has too little practice with rejection.

“You needn’t have sent him away,” Roland remarks.

“He is distracting. What’s your business?”

Roland does not sit. “The Bakers have come to see me. Their daughter has disappeared.”


	2. Chapter 2

The Bakers’ name is their business. They should be early risers and in bed before sundown, but they are fretting in their parlor. Miriam, their daughter, went out to deliver breads all through the City and did not return for lunch. They were not worried; Miriam has many friends, and the morning delivery is her main duty for the day. Miriam did not return for supper, either, and they did worry a little bit, but she had been that late before. When darkness fell, her father went to the Castle. Miriam enjoys herself during the day, but she has always taken the family business seriously. Early to bed, indeed.

“Has she a fellow?” Roland asks. “Could she have eloped?”

“I don’t think so,” her mother sobs.

“No fellow,” I agree. “May I touch something of hers?”

They lead me to her bedroom. There have been no men in here besides her father, and he has done nothing untoward. My mind drifts through the memory of the place: a plain girl, blandly pretty in an unadorned and wholesome way; a regimented schedule I respect. There is no mirror, but I see her run her fingers through her hair and adjust how her breasts fit in her corset until just a little bit of cleavage shows at the cinched neckline of her blouse. She tucks a dried flower behind her ear. No fellow, but she wanted to look appealing. The bed is welcoming, a place of peaceful sleep and burning orgasms realized at her fingertips. A name: Sissy.

I have a strong suspicion of what happened to her, now, and I am torn. Cuthbert is indiscriminate in his affections, but not in front of his parents or the City elders; publicly, his enthusiastic womanizing successfully eclipses the more private fact that he's also a sodomite. Roland knows - likely first hand - but he is trustworthy and loyal. Roland also knows my preferences - and so does Cuthbert, obviously. Much as I do want to ask him to be mine for each day evermore, it is folly even to entertain the thought. Casual as it is, ours is a secret and shameful affair, already. Exile and scandal would follow directly were were found out, just as they would do if Bert abandoned all his other lovers and the two of us ran off together.

“A list?” I ask. “Of where she brought your wares? And any friends she might have visited?”

There is no Sissy on the list. 

“Say thankya.” I depart. Roland is the politician; I can leave him to soothe the grieving family. I long to be alone.

Without the warm glow of the old streetlamps, the cobblestones become a rippling river in the moonlight. It is too dark to read the list outside, but I remember one name in particular: a place where girls and boys do what they please. I have only been there at night - with Cuthbert - but taverns are open in the daytime, too.

“Have you a lead?” With his long, purposeful stride, Roland has caught me shuffling in contemplation.

“Maybe. I am almost certain she has run off with a lover.” I keep my voice low even though the streets appear to be deserted.

“You and the mother said there wasn’t any fellow.”

“No, there wasn’t.” 

I look into Roland’s eyes. Incomprehension lingers, then gives way.

“Oh.”

“I am sympathetic,” I admit.

“Yes,” Roland agrees. “Are you certain?”

I am not. “I cannot feel her in the City - she is gone. In one way or another, she is gone.”

“Murdered?”

“It’s not impossible.”

“Find out. If she left of her own volition I will get Cuthbert to craft something to tell them. Something kind.”

Kindness is not a virtue I associate with Cuthbert, but, then, Roland is not in love with him. He takes his leave and stalks in silence back towards the Castle. I weave my way to Cuthbert’s tavern.

Like every old building in Gilead, the tavern has seen better days. The ‘Mabel’s’ sign over the door is missing more than one letter. Its outside walls are caked with grime. Inside, however, it is a jungle of color and smell, and light and music spill out of its open door like beer from an overturned tankard. I recoil. There are too many people here, too many sights and sounds and stray emotions. The darkened City may be bleak, but I am much more comfortable alone. 

I give the doorway a wide berth and duck into an alley. I don’t sense Cuthbert in the tavern, but when his mind is closed it can be hard to find. My bare fingers stroke the sooty bricks, and I attempt to touch the place instead. He is here, just as I suspected. And, as I suspected, he is not alone.

Cuthbert is naked in the upstairs hallway, braced against the wall. A man I recognize is pounding into him; he is a castle guard. A woman in a beaded dress lounges against the wall beside him smoking a cigarette. At intervals, she blows her smoke in Cuthbert’s face and then leans in to kiss him.

“I can’t believe you’re letting me, Allgood,” the man moans against the straining muscles of Bert’s rangy, unclothed back.

“I’m just the same as you.”

“You are a gunslinger.”

“That was an accident. You know that it’s all luck.”

The woman laughs. She runs her hand down Cuthbert’s front and grabs at him, making him keen.

“You’re still a gunslinger,” she whispers in his ear.

I will come back tomorrow.


	3. Chapter 3

During the day, Bert’s favorite tavern is not such an over-sensory experience. There is still music, but it is only the pianist. The windows are unshuttered, and no lamps are lit. There is less perfume in the air. 

I enter, and a shockingly attractive fair haired man serves me a hot popkin and ale. Fewer limp rugs are hanging around this time of day, and, with no Cuthbert to stare at, I notice for the first time just how beautiful the other people in the establishment are. The barkeep is like sunshine, from his golden curls to his tanned skin to his warm smile. An older fellow, older than my father, the proprietor is chiseled underneath his shaggy hair and grizzled beard; I find myself imagining how his strong, callused hands would feel upon my body. More surprising is my reaction to his wife. I should think her matronly - a friendly presence, not a sexual one, even if my appetites normally bent that way - but she is elegant, an ornately decorated lacquer box my fingertips beg to unlatch. 

The other women don’t affect me so. The barkeep’s wife, the pianist, is finely crafted, sure, but I feel no instinct to bend her over her bench. The cook is handsome, with a wide and pleasant smile. She reminds me of my mother. Her daughter, a girl of perhaps twelve, is compellingly sweet, helping her mother in the kitchen.

I won’t question these people if I do not have to. Enjoying the relative solitude of the mostly empty tavern, I waste away the afternoon, feeling the people and the place. The pianist and the cook I can read easily. In their minds, I see Sissy at last: a swarthy lass with paler eyes than typical of one with her complexion and a great deal of curly, black hair. She played the fiddle, perched on the piano’s upright back. She met Miriam every day when she delivered bread. The cook remembers looking away, blushing, while the two girls kissed in the pantry. 

The barkeep, the proprietor, his wife, the cook’s daughter - I cannot read their thoughts. Like Cuthbert sometimes is, they are closed off. Is that why he likes it here? Maybe, after the orgies, they sit in a circle and practice their mental defenses. Maybe that is why I find them so attractive. 

I drift and Bert is in my lap, agreeing not to come here. When I come to the part where I push him away and send him out into the City on his own, I start the vision over, but the moment is too short for satisfaction. Back in the tavern, I decide to sink instead into the building’s memories of Miriam and Sissy’s romance. 

“You will be mine forever, right?” Miriam whispers.

“Are you asking?”

“Yes.”

I lean my head on my hands.

“He isn’t here.”

The woman in the beaded dress is sitting next to me. Evening has come, and Bert has not come with it. In person, she is vastly more appealing than she was in my vision, and the thought of her kissing Cuthbert upstairs is more arousing than it was. The lamps are on, and her dress shimmers. It scoops low enough that I can see the flat space in between her palm-sized, separated breasts. Cuthbert is flat there, too. Her mind is closed like his, like all those other gorgeous people in the tavern. I want her.

“Allgood,” she clarifies. “You’ve been waiting a long time.”

“I’m not waiting for him.” It is almost the truth.

“Here on official business, then, gunslinger?”

I try not to think about the last time my mind heard her speak that word. “Miriam Baker is missing.”

“The girl who delivers the bread?” Her skeptical drawl sounds calculated. 

“Sissy’s friend,” I prompt. “Tell me about Sissy.”

She smiles: not cherry wine but too, too sweet liqueur. “Come on upstairs.”

I have been yearning for a treat, and she has, too, apparently; her appetite is as voracious as Bert’s. I have not been with a woman in years, but I want to hear what she has to say, and she is strangely irresistible. 

We pass the place where she and Cuthbert leaned against the wall last night and go into a room. 

“What is your name?”

“I know yours: Johns.”

“Do you call all gunslingers by their surnames? There’s more than one Johns. More than one Allgood, too.”

“Not that come in here.”

I snort. That’s certainly the case.

“My name is Saralinda. I’ll put on a dinner jacket and an ascot if you want. I don’t mind if you want to take me from behind.” The wardrobe is full of clothes.

That won’t be necessary. I’m already hard. “Whatever you want.”

She closes the wardrobe. 

Apparently, she wants me on my back and fully clothed. She leaves her dress on, too, but lets me palm the flat place in between her breasts. The heat of her around me has me sweating. Moonlight catches on her beaded gown. When I orgasm, I see stars. Again, more vividly than in the light downstairs, she shimmers.

After, she lies down beside me on the bed and rolls a cigarette. “You’re a pretty good fuck.”

“Good enough for answers?” I turn onto my side to look at her. 

“You could ask Allgood.”

“He isn’t part of this.” I hope.

“Neither am I.”

“Tell me about Sissy.”

Saralinda takes a long draw from her cigarette. Her words are full of smoke. “She used to be a regular, like me.”

“Not anymore?”

“You wouldn’t be here if she was.”

“Where is her family?”

She shrugs. “She came from North of Gilead, ahead of Farson’s army. Chances are, her family are dead.”

“Where is she now?”

“She settled down.”

“But where?” I press.

“In someplace safe.”


	4. Chapter 4

On the way back to my quarters, I meet Cuthbert coming down the stairs. He freezes when he sees me.

“It is after midnight,” he remarks. Gilead has no more electricity and little lamp oil left, but clockwork functions well enough, and the old City Chimes are still maintained. I heard them start when I mounted the stairs. “Tomorrow’s come and gone.”

“It did not occur to me that you’d be here,” I tell him truthfully. Could Bert have really waited hours on my doorstep while I fucked some woman in that tavern that he likes?

He passes me on the narrow staircase. We don’t touch. Several steps below me, he looks up through long, dark lashes. “I promised.”

“I didn’t realize.”

His smile is a small rowboat on an ocean of sadness. “You’ve been with someone else.”

Guilt swarms my throat, and I swallow it down. He doesn’t get to play with my emotions. “You have been with _everyone_ ,” I hiss.

I want him to make excuses, but he doesn’t. Slowly, he turns and trudges into darkness. This time, he has no candle; he must have arrived before nightfall.

“I was working!” I call after him. I am a hypocrite. “She gave me information on a disappearance. She wasn’t you, Bert. I missed you. I didn’t realize you were here.”

His footsteps stop. “Not everyone,” wafts up out of the darkness.

“Not strictly,” I allow. I can think of several specific people Bert has probably not fucked.

“Strictly _not_ everyone,” he corrects, reappearing around the central column of the spiral tower stairs. “You, others like me.”

“Satyromaniacs?”

He smiles flatly. 

“Nymphomaniacs?” I add. “Roland?”

“Roland?!” Like surprised cats, his eyebrows leap; then, his whole posture affects nonchalance. He dismisses the notion of Roland with a loose flick of his hand. “Not for a very long time. Those other words, I suppose they apply in their way.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” I whisper. It is an apology. “I never meant to stand you up.”

His smile is still flat. “Which memory were you planning to lose yourself inside, up there alone?”

That woman, Saralinda. “You, last night.”

“I doubt that. We were interrupted.”

“Let’s pretend we hadn’t been. Why don’t you come back up and fuck me?”

Cuthbert laughs sharply. He presses his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets, then pinches the bridge of his nose. “Why _don’t_ I?”

“Please, Bert, come upstairs.”

My begging is effective. Moments later, we are in my bedroom and Cuthbert has stripped me of my jacket and my shirt. He is on his knees unbuckling my trousers. 

“Do you have water?”

“For drinking?” I always keep a pitcher in my office.

“For bathing. She is _on_ you. I don’t like it.”

His possessiveness is shocking, and I am aroused but not far gone enough that I am not offended. 

“I’m not your property,” I remind him.

“Ask, then,” he urges, peering up from next to my hard cock.

“Suck her off me. Fuck me. Make me yours tonight.”

“Alright.”

He takes me in his mouth and does not seem to wince at whatever remains of the woman’s taste. He probably has tasted her before, first hand: one of his nymphomaniacs.

We don’t finish like that, of course. Before long, I am on my hands and knees with his fingers inside me. I’m almost certain that he is still dressed.

“You’re delightfullly pliant,” he remarks, easing me wider. Then, he forges deeper, hits that spot. “Delightful, generally.”

“Cuthbert,” I whine. I have become his flute. With pleasure, he can draw such sounds from me, such sweet, nuanced reactions.

“Does that mean you’re ready, then?”

“You’ll let me see you, right?”

“Of course.” He eases his fingers out. “Turn over.”

I roll over, and he strips. Slowly. 

“God, yes. You’re beautiful.”

He laughs. “You wouldn’t like a portrait of me half so well.”

“Of course not!”

“I’m a skinny man, Alain.” He runs long fingers over his tight nipples, down the ripples of his ribs. “My shoulders are too slight. My eyes . . .”

“Your eyes are beautiful.”

“They are unusually large. My nose is very long.”

“You have the Allgood nose.”

He grins. “Do you desire my father, then?”

“Not in the least! Have you finished teasing? I will need more attention if you take much longer.” 

I sit up to reach for Cuthbert’s oil, and he’s on me. His thin fingers clutch my shoulder, and his elbow presses my thick bicep down into the bed. His knee is next to my right thigh. His lips are on my wanting mouth. The oil is leaking on my quilt, and two of his fingers are in my body once again. I have had Cuthbert on his stomach and his back before, and more than once, but tonight I want this. I don’t want him to ‘let’ me do anything.

Bert is not particularly gentle, and my lower back aches afterwards from how he had me bent. I stretch, arching it up, then twisting side to side.

“I cry your pardon,” Cuthbert murmurs at my elbow. “Was it to your liking, otherwise?”

My lower back is not the only thing that aches. Cuthbert has pinned his presence in my body and my heart. “It was sublime.”

He's leaning over me again. “Ask, then.” He is smiling.

“Stay.”


	5. Chapter 5

The breeze through the unshuttered window warms my face and naked shoulder like an open kiln. I had thought Cuthbert’s body intertwined with mine would make me sweat all night, but, though he does not seem unnaturally cool, his skin is perfect against mine. I don't wake 'til the early morning when a knock sounds on the outside office door.

Bert groans and squirms delightfully against my skin, fumbling for the discarded quilt. He pulls it up over his head. “You keep horrible business hours,” he complains. 

Outside, the rose of dawn has yet to bloom; the City streets are still enclosed within the unripe bud of darkness. Leaving Cuthbert naked in my bed, I dress and meet the visitor. It’s Roland.

“I cry your pardon for the wait.” I let him into my office. “You caught me still abed.”

He nods and glances towards my bedroom door. It is shut tight.

“It is early,” he states. He is not obligated to apologize and doesn’t. “Somebody else has disappeared: the barkeeper at Mabel’s Tavern - Lovelace - and his wife.”

“The pianist?” 

Roland shrugs. “I saw the list.” The list of establishments where the Bakers were delivering bread.

I nod. “I saw the Lovelaces at Mabel’s yesterday. Last night after eleven. When did they disappear?”

“Sometime between when you saw them and when the Bakers brought the bread this early morning, I suppose. The Bakers reported them gone. Nobody in the tavern had an excuse for their absence.”

“You don’t think they fled the war?”

“Fled where? The world has moved on.” An ominous stormcloud of a thought floats dismally through Roland’s mind.

I lower my voice to a whisper. “You suspect Cuthbert?!”

Roland is a frightened child abandoned in a forest. He winces at the oncoming storm. “He spends so much time there.”

“Fucking,” I remind him. “Getting fucked.”

Roland confesses: “I can’t find Bert, either.”

I don’t answer fast enough. It’s somewhat heartening that the emotion flooding Roland’s mind is hope. His voice drops to an even lower whisper than my own.

“He’s here?”

I rub my forehead, and I nod.

“All night?”

“Yes,” I start to answer. Then, I remember how deeply I slept. I correct myself: “Probably. He was here when I fell asleep and here when I woke up.”

Roland’s hope does not completely drain away. “Search his quarters,” he commands. “I will distract him.”

I grimace.

His long fingers, so much like Bert’s, claw my arm. “I can’t stand not to trust him.” 

Neither can I. “Trust him,” I whisper, “until I tell you otherwise.”

Roland’s smile is not cherry wine; it is much rarer: whiskey aged more years than our fathers have lived. I savor it.

“One moment.”

Bert sits up in bed when I come in. His chest is bare; the covers pool around his waist. He wasn’t wrong: he is a skinny man, but I don’t want him any less. I don’t want him to be involved.

“I have to go,” I tell him. “Business.”

“How long shall I wait here?”

“I might be hours.”

“For propriety’s sake, I mean. Roland is here?” He raises his eyebrows. 

“I didn’t think you minded. If he knew.” My words trip awkwardly along a rootbound path.

Bert studies me. Birdlike, he cocks his head. His large eyes and long nose only make him more beautiful; what more conventionally proportioned face could be so captivating?

At last he agrees: “I don’t.”

I exhale in relief, and I admit, “He knows you’re here. I don’t need him with me, so I thought you might have breakfast.”

I have been irritated by Bert’s smile before, but this is the first time the sweetness in it's made me sick.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How long can this go on without any wordy exposition? Exactly this long.

Bert's quarters aren't set up like mine. Although I am a gunslinger like my two friends, my peculiar specialty allows me to indulge my preference for solitude. The office and adjoining room atop my tower were most lately occupied by the disgraced magician, Marten Broadcloak, who fled Gilead some time before I earned my own commission. I was nervous to claim his rooms at first, but my mental forays into the place revealed only just how little time he spent there. Unlike his son, Roland's father rarely deigns to visit his reports when he conducts official business, and the bulk of Marten's mischief was, likewise, committed elsewhere. Now, both the bedroom and office are thoroughly mine.

Contrarily, as Roland's adjunct, Cuthbert has no office of his own. He and Roland share a larger facility close to the Castle Gate where they address the panicked public's day to day concerns. Before the world moved on, Bert would have sat at the reception desk all day, calming and charming the complainants, worrywarts, and victims and forwarding those he deemed worthy of higher concern to Roland, who would sit in the more private office at the back, pass judgment, and dispatch more gunslingers as he saw fit.

There aren’t enough gunslingers, now, for this model to work. Roland has only Bert and me at his command, and all of us are busy. So, Cuthbert and Roland rarely occupy their office both at once; instead, they take turns at the reception desk and address the public’s concerns themselves or forward them to me. For hours every day, their office is completely empty. When they are there at the same time, they use the stately desk usually designated for the higher ranking gunslinger as a meeting table, and they cover it with city maps or military diagrams or, like this morning, breakfast. Neither of their quarters adjoin.

Because of his rank, Roland merits a grand suite. On the rare occasions when the three of us take leave together, we sometimes meet there. Cuthbert’s room is on the floor above in Roland’s tower’s turret. Other plainer but more comfortable rooms were offered, but Bert’s whimsy led him to choose this one with its tall, pointed ceiling supported by intricate beams, its three windows, its inescapable drafts. The place is a microcosm of the season, sweltering in summer, freezing in winter. Sometimes birds get in. Always, you can hear them on the roof. I’ve never been here in the daytime, though I’ve been in Cuthbert’s bed before and, once, over his private desk. I’ve never stayed the night.

After so many stairs, the sudden warmth of Bert’s room makes me sweat, but it is fresh and breezy here, though there is guano on the floor. Since last I came, it seems he has embraced the birds. In the light, I can see he has installed a plethora of nesting boxes of all sizes high up on the beams. One, I’m almost certain, contains bats. I feel them stir at my presence, then slip back to their dreams of night. 

Bert has a wild reputation, but his living space is not wholly a wilderness. His bed and desk are carefully arranged in gaps between the beams, and they are free of guano. Roland has sent me here to touch this place because I told him once before that Cuthbert’s mind is a locked cabinet. Even when he is ostensibly open, only the curios behind glass doors are on display for me. His deeper drawers are inaccessible. 

I start with the most familiar place: I lie back on the bed and drift.

I find it full of my own memories: Our kisses fly towards me on the breeze, hotter than the summer wind and all consuming. Hands between us - Cuthbert’s, mine. My strong arm on his narrow back, pinning him down. Night black eyes and a crooked smile in the shadow of his elbow. Me, retreating, leaving him a-tangle in his dirty sheets.

I stop drifting and push. 

Bert does not bring his many lovers here. Instead, once our encounters are eliminated, I find his bed stuffed only with impressions of his solitary, restless sleep. In one, he wakes to see a nearly silent owl swoop up onto a lofty roost. The owl tears at a mouse. Bert meets its bright, round eyes and says softly, “Hello.”

One more push and I, at last, find him in bed with someone else. It isn't a gilly or one of his friends from Mabel's, though - not even the castle guard, whose presence would be easily excused. It's Roland.

‘Not for a very long time,’ Bert said last night, and they _are_ younger here. It must be near the time when we all chose our quarters. Their conversation bears out my assumption; Roland is disparaging Cuthbert’s selection and reminding him he can still change his mind. They’re lying side by side on Cuthbert’s bed, boots off but otherwise fully clothed. Their hands are clasped. It’s sweet, and it’s something Roland already knows, and I’m intruding on their private past, but I fail to pry myself out of the vision when I hear my name.

“You wouldn’t rather be close to Alain?” 

Roland is jostling Bert’s knee with his. He’s teasing him. The nausea I felt when Cuthbert smiled at my deception is a cannonball inside my gut.

Bert bumps back but rolls his eyes. “There _are_ no quarters close to Al. By his design - don’t tell me otherwise.”

Roland squints at him. “I doubt he is avoiding _you_.”

“Do you?” Cuthbert’s brows are furrowed. He foreshadows the gesture that he made last night: thumb and forefingers pressed against his closed eyes, he confides, “Al is so ill at ease with his peculiarity. He does not relish such attention. I suppose I can’t begrudge him not wanting to risk seeming even more . . . odd.” 

“Whereas you have embraced your own peculiarity in full,” Roland reasons.

Bert uncovers his eyes and waggles his eyebrows, but his mouth has a gloomy turn.

Roland lets go of Cuthbert’s hand and turns onto his side. He squeezes Bert’s shoulder instead. “Everybody knows you are a rare bird, Bert. You do not need to live up here to prove it. Why not take the room underneath mine?”

“That room is boring,” Cuthbert pouts, but his mood is improving. Now, his frown is artificial.

“This one is freezing!”

“Go and light a fire, then.” Bert gives Roland a shove. “That is your chimney running up behind the bed.”

A smile quirks on Roland’s lips, and Bert’s face breaks into an unreserved grin.

“Oh, I see how it is!” Roland cries out. “You think I ought to serve you for a change. Light your own fire!” 

A shoving match ensues, which ends with Cuthbert on the floor - a heap of giggles. Their play is boyish, innocent, uncomplicated by their sexuality. Was it after this that they were lovers? No: before - in the cold, bitter aftermath of Susan’s death in the now fallen barony of Mejis - those days when Roland was a heartsick wreck, and Bert desired nothing more than to give his friend comfort.

I vacate the bed, but Cuthbert’s laughter is still ringing in my ears. The cannonball has rolled into my throat. I am not going to find anything suspicious here, but I have already betrayed Bert’s trust. Eager to finish my assignment, I touch the room at large. 

The rest of the place does not have much memory attached to it, for Bert spends more time in his office and in Roland’s rooms and mine than he does here. I see him building birdhouses and adding blankets to his bed. I see him reading, writing.

The books lined up atop his desk are all familiar, unsuspicious. On the blank first page of one of them someone has drawn a caricature: Bert with giant, owl-round eyes and an exaggeration of his long, pointed, scoop nose. Both of us are correct: in black and white, the image is less than conventionally handsome, but, in the flesh and otherwise, his is a compelling face. I wonder whether Bert drew that himself. 

I wonder whether he expected me to come snooping and find it.

There is only one truly odd thing in Cuthbert’s room: a pair of letters on his desk addressed, respectively, to his parents and to Roland and sealed with the stamp on his personal ring. I have a light enough touch to open them without tearing the wax, but then the seal would not stick, and Bert, or the recipients, would know they had been tampered with. I contemplate opening Roland’s - he did send me here - but I do not. Instead, I touch the paper, and I see Bert writing. His expression is serious. From the way he hunches over his project, I can’t read what he writes over his shoulder, but I do catch a few phrases, which he whispers as he writes. 

“The world has moved on,” at the beginning. Cuthbert laughs, but it is raw and sad. 

Then, “LOVE YOU,” underlined three times - I recognize the motion of his hand - and “safe.”

The Bert writing those letters is not quite so young as the one lying down with Roland on his bed, but he is younger than he is today. I let myself drift back into my memory.

The pointed corner of the top of Cuthbert’s desk digs into the soft flesh above my groin. I’m not fully undressed, but I begin to wish I was so that my nipples rubbed along the woodgrain. Cuthbert’s hands have found my skin, however; they are bruising my bare hips. He is inside me, and each thrust forces my tender belly hard against that sharp right angle of the desk. But, there is much more pleasure than pain. I remove one hand from where it clutches at the far side of the desk to cover my own mouth and stifle, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Bert slows. He slides one hand, suddenly gentle, underneath my shirt, up my bare back. He leans close to my ear and whispers, “Nobody will hear.” 

I don’t remove my hand, and I do not stay with him afterwards. He has never expected me to. 

I’m not here to examine my behavior. Shaking off my lust, I hold my memory in one part of my mind and reach out towards the place. In the room’s memory, we make a lurid picture. Were I to touch myself I might come instantly from seeing lanky Cuthbert bending me across his furniture; the memory already has me close. 

I shake myself again. There, on the corner of the table, underneath a pair of folded gloves, are the two letters. It has been at least a year.

This truth pours over me like cold rain ruining an almost temperate spring day with one last bite of winter's chill. Sweat-cold in the warm room and suddenly and grimly unaroused, I abandon Cuthbert’s quarters to the bats and birds in search of other ways to bide my time till I can speak with Roland.


	7. Chapter 7

In daytime, the City is a dying anthill. Major corridors are still abustle, but side streets that once brimmed with steady traffic echo my lonely footsteps like a hollow drum. Both Simon Lovelace and his wife have living parents in the City, and I have visited them both. Unlike the Bakers, they seem unsurprised and unalarmed that Simon and Noelle have disappeared; although, they offer me no explanation. 

“It is none of your concern,” the Lovelace matron tells me in her tailor’s shop.

Noelle Lovelace nee Tinker’s father says, “My daughter’s safe; please leave the matter be.”

And now I dawdle. I would not like to encounter Bert before can I report to Roland; I will avoid the Castle until I am certain they have finished with their breakfast.

Piano music sails through an open window to my ears. My wandering has brought me back to Mabel’s. Inside, the proprietor is playing in a different style than the lost Noelle. He glowers at me when I enter. I avoid him and approach the room where I trysted with Saralinda.

The castle guard answers my knock. He is bare chested, muscular as me but taller. I am jealous.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he says over his shoulder. Then, to me, “He isn’t here.”

“Allgood?” I mimic their use of Bert’s surname. “I’m not looking for him.”

“I’ve a day off.”

“Fine.”

“You want him in here?” he asks Saralinda.

Naked on the bed, she shrugs. “I’ll talk a moment. Close the door.”

The castle guard ushers me in and shuts the door behind me. He retreats to Saralinda’s bed. I float around the room like debris trapped above a clogged a storm drain, uncertain where to go. 

“I’ve been warned off you,” Saralinda tells me with a wicked smile.

Whatever guilt has festered since my visit to Bert’s room does not forestall my irritation. It had been a relief to desire a woman for once. “I’m not his property,” I fume.

“Whose fault is that?” the guard mutters into his lover’s creamy shoulder. He begins kissing along her collarbone.

My jealousy and anger kindle further, but I smother them. I did not come here to discuss Cuthbert or my relationship with him.

I prompt Saralinda: “The barkeep and the pianist?” 

“Simon and Noelle?” she corrects.

“Not the Lovelaces? Not Lovelace and Tinker?” I prod, thinking of ‘Allgood.’

“He is a gunslinger,” she says. “He’ll never quite belong.”

“Where did they go?”

“The Bakers put you up to this?”

“It is my job.”

“You see? My point exactly. They went willingly, and so did Miriam. Leave it alone.” She turns to kiss the castle guard. His trousers are undone. She straddles him.

I am dismissed. I’ve dallied long enough; Roland is waiting.

“Cuthbert has several sexual neuroses,” I report, feeling ungenerous after my visit to the tavern. I was lucky not to meet him there.

An errant snort finds its way out of Roland’s nose, but his expression remains stern. “Cuhbert is contending with a rash of thefts in the High Street,” he informs me. “You weren’t aware of this before?”

He’s not talking about the thefts. “Of course I was.”

I slump into the chair across from Roland - Cuthbert’s chair - and lean my elbow on the armrest and my head upon my palm. We are in the private back room of their office. The tabletop is an abandoned battlefield scattered with the cold remains of their breakfast together.

Roland clears his throat. “Propriety is not something Cuthbert respects. But, he does respect your wishes. I never meant to subject you to a parade of his lovers.”

“You didn’t,” I admit. “He doesn’t bring them there. The only person I saw in his bed was you.”

Roland blushes. “I’ve never been in that bed. We don’t . . . anymore.”

“And you weren’t in the vision I saw; you were discussing the room. But, I thought you still did until he told me otherwise last night. Bert implies things, but he doesn’t tell me secrets if I do not ask him to. He’s always wanting me to ask for things.” 

This jars something in Roland’s memory. It bubbles up and makes a ripple in between his eyebrows, but he does not share. If he were not a friend, I might dive deep inside him searching for the pearl. Roland prefers privacy, but he can’t altogether shut me out like Cuthbert can. 

“You know him better than I do,” I say instead. It is a painful admission.

“So, you have gathered nothing?” Roland’s hope outweighs his disappointment.

“Nothing pertinent: He keeps his windows open all the time. There are birdhouses. Inside.”

“I know.”

“There is a letter for you on his desk,” I whisper. “Sealed.”

“Did you open it?”

I shake my head. “There’s one for his parents, too. I felt him writing them. More than a year ago, I’m sure. I think they might be goodbye letters. In case something happens.”

“He is sentimental,” Roland remarks, but his white face underscores his palpable discomfort.

It’s not my place to further burden him with my own dour sentiment that there was no letter addressed to me. 

“Trust him, Roland. All these people, they left of their own accord. I can’t tell where they went, but the Lovelaces’ families are unconcerned, and I am certain Miriam ran off with that girl, Sissy.”

“War rages everywhere outside the City walls. There is no safer place than Gilead. They don’t join Farson, surely!”

“I don’t think so. But they're gone. Maybe there’s someplace in the West?”

Roland dismisses me. There are curious aspects to the case, but people are allowed to leave the City; although, it's not advised. He tells me to save my strength - a crime more horrible will demand my attention soon - and waits for Cuthbert to return to craft him something ‘kind.’ I am eager to leave. The grey stormcloud of Roland’s suspicion has paled, and it’s frosty in his office now. His soul is chilled by the assumption that, if something does happen to Bert, it will be in his name. On that matter, I have no kindling to warm his heart. I retreat to the seclusion of my tower.

Bert was right: I did select these quarters for their isolation. The emotions of friends and strangers do not creep into my restful head, and nobody visits who is not determined to see me. It occurs to me that Cuthbert visits almost every day although I rarely climb the other tower’s stairs to visit him. Will he come here again once he has finished with the thefts? I did not ask for him to promise each day after. 

I let myself drift. Unguided, my touch starts here, the other night in this same office chair. I float over the inky City. Yes, there were more lights last week. Black eyes. Cuthbert is in my lap.

Me: “. . . so I can have you tomorrow?”

Cuthbert, later: “Ask.”

And my response, last night.

And my response, three years ago, when I first claimed these quarters. 

Bert is sitting on my desk, a little younger and a little skinnier, if such a thing is possible, his hair a little longer and less kempt, and he is looking at me like that owl above his bed looked at its mouse. I swallow and reciprocate. 

“Ask,” Cuthbert prompts.

And I say, “Kiss me.”

I am lost in the hot tunnel of our fundamental kiss when I feel someone else approach. It is not Bert nor Roland but a man in uniform: a stranger, not, as I first dreaded at the sight, the guard I’ve seen mixed up with Bert and Saralinda. 

“Good evening, soldier.” Those willing to climb the stairs, I do my best to receive with respect. “Roland Deschain assigns my cases, but you’re welcome to speak with me.”

He gives a shaky nod. “My wife and daughter. They are gone.”


	8. Chapter 8

I’ve had enough. The Baker girl, her lover, the barkeep, the pianist and now the cook and her little girl, too. 

I crash into the over-sensory jungle of the tavern with my hands on my guns, and the limp rugs fly away on the wind.

“What the fuck is happening here?! Tell me now!” I round on the proprietor.

Behind me: “Oh, shit.” Saralinda. “Find him.”

In the periphery of my vision, the castle guard departs. He’s gone to fetch Bert to diffuse the situation. Or to stop me. If it turns out he’s involved in this, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Or, he might have gone to fetch Cuthbert to save me. My guns fall from my hands like autumn leaves and land upon the floor as softly. My ears throb. The world spins, and I am on the floor, myself. The mist in my ears and over my eyes clears, but I can't move. My fingers are heavy lead bars - my knees, anvils. 

Saralinda’s hand is on my neck, feeling my pulse. I see her face. “Don’t do this, Peter.”

“Just because you and Allgood have fucked him . . .”

“He’s a gunslinger,” she hisses. “He’ll be missed.”

Miriam was missed, too, but my tongue is swollen as a gourd, so I can’t tell them that. My vision blurs. Somehow, the proprietor, Peter, is draining my life force. Is this what happened to the others?

Cuthbert steps in. Even prone and motionless, I recognize the line of his leg and the tip of his boot as he strides past my arm. His left hand is raised but empty. His gun is steady in his right. 

I can’t see the proprietor, but I can hear him. “I thought you weren’t committed,” he drawls nastily.

“Irrelevant,” Bert snaps. “Stop it right now!” 

The monster laughs. “What makes you think you can contend with me, boy? I am more than twice your age.”

“I’m old enough to stall you while I shoot, I reckon. You all labor so much upon the point; surely you've not forgotten that I am a gunslinger?”

I feel my life force stabilize, but I am much too weak to move or speak. 

“It’s not my fault!” the man complains. “Why should we take the blame for carelessness and accidents?”

“Sissy and Miriam were careless,” Bert agrees, “but he was ready to accept the basic truth. Who told Simon he should be afraid? Who told Grace and Melanie? You have made us conspicuous!”

“There is no ‘us’ for you, gunslinger. Barely before and certainly not after this. Get the fuck out and take him with you. You won't be welcome here again. You can’t be one thing and the other.” He steps into my field of vision, now, and Cuthbert tenses. “Look at him with his hand and his gun!” the proprietor continues. “He’d send us all to the unknown in one way or another!”

Cuthbert kneels, and Saralinda disappears to give him room. His lips are pressed together. 

“I’ll do my best to smooth the situation over,” he mutters, “but only the truth is left.”

Bert may be a skinny man, but I am not. There is no way he should be able to sling me over his shoulder like I was his traveling purse, but I am certain that he does. That is his shoulder that I feel under my waist, his lower back my cheek bounces against, his serrated spine my clumsy finger finds, his claw-like hand that’s creeping up my pant leg, past my boot shaft to my flesh. He leans his ear against my upper thigh. 

“Sleep, Al. I’ve got you. Once you rest, we’ll sort this out.”

I do not want to rest, but dark is flowing from his hand. My whole leg sinks into a deep ravine, and consciousness tumbles in after.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time for that part of the mystery after the hero gets in over his head and has to be rescued by his potentially dangerous love interest where everything's explained in great detail . . .

I awake in a strange bed in a room I have not seen before. Outside, voices jangle like dented bells. A piece of furniture in the adjoining room knocks rhythmically against the wall. We have gone deeper into Low Town, a place whose lurid temptations I habitually avoid.

It’s very dark, of course, but I can see Bert’s lanky silhouette folded into a chair beside the bed as he stares out the window.

“Bert . . .” I croak.

He looks at me, and I’m suddenly certain every time his eyes seemed strange before was not a trick of my imagination. Not only that: I’m certain he inserted himself into my memory the other night when I was floating, looking at the City lights. Because, whatever the proprietor at Mabel’s is, Cuthbert is, too.

“Your eyes are black,” I whisper.

“Oh.” I can feel Cuthbert blush. He’s open for me. Soft. “That’s the night vision,” he explains. “I try to be careful, but the oil shortage . . . with so many lamps and torches gone, it’s been more difficult to hide.”

Bert doesn’t move, but lamplight paints the room in broad, warm, yellow strokes. His eyes normalize - they’re brown - but there’s no lamp that I can see, no logical source of light, and I am frightened of him. The sounds of the whores and the drunks muffle slowly into nothingness. I wonder: would they hear me if I screamed?

I react badly: “What the fuck are you?!” 

“A changeling,” Cuthbert explains softly. "Fae."

I suck air in through my teeth and almost choke on spit. I believe him. The way his mind is soft and open is not normal for a human being, and I know he is telling the truth.

“And the others . . . the others like you . . .”

“Nymphs and satyrs?” Cuthbert’s lips twitch. “Faeries, yes.”

“Changelings.”

Bert nods.

“And the limp rugs?” 

Cutbert’s eyebrows knit. Incomprehension saturates his soft, inhuman mind.

“Those people who fawn over you because of what you are. ‘Not everyone,’ you said, but my first guess was closer to the truth. You can’t pretend that you don’t fuck those girls you let your parents see you with, those hangers-on in Mabels . . .”

“Mab’s,” he interrupts, correcting. “Rarely. And not for a very long time. It isn’t fair to them.”

I recall the tavern’s sign: the faded imprint of the missing E and L. It’s not a funny joke, and I ignore both that and his insistence of his near fidelity, accusing, “There was a reason I could get it up for Saralinda, wasn’t there?”

Cuthbert’s lips thin out. It’s not a smile, and I taste his sour jealousy and bitter guilt. “She overstepped. And so did I. I never meant to press you, Al, but I was weak." He looks down at the floor. "I told you that you wouldn’t like a portrait half so well.”

“I liked the caricature, too,” I blurt without thinking.

His eyes rise up like bubbles from the depths of a deep pond. They are so beautiful. He smiles a watery smile and reaches one long, slender finger towards my face.

I jerk away and sit upright against the headboard. My head swims, but I can’t let this imposter think I’m drowning in his eyes. I spit, “I would have loved him, wouldn’t I - the real Cuthbert Allgood. Where is he?”

The changeling jerks back sharply. Now his back is rigid, too. The light he conjured dims to almost nothing. Suddenly, the space between us is a gulf of darkness wider than the span of his alluring, gangly arms. He is still open; I can feel his pain, but I don’t care. He isn’t who I thought he was. 

“He’s safe,” he whispers.

I am tired of that answer, and I raise my voice to tell him so: “I hear that again and again! Saralinda said it, and now you. Safe where?! Where you came from? The Faerie plane?”

The changeling ducks his head - a sheepish nod - and then responds with Bert-like pedantry. “It’s more of a space-time continuum.”

The metaphysics of the situation barely interest me. “And Miriam?" I press. "The Lovelaces? That little girl? Her mother?”

“All safe in the Faerie Continuum.”

Am I safe? Will I be taken next? Will he drain my life force if I don’t cooperate? I feel no animosity from him, but, even before this revelation, I was well aware that, even open, he was always hiding much. Carefully, I ask him, “Why? Why are you taking people?”

He smiles tightly. “Al, I haven’t taken anyone.” He thinks it’s true.

“You took Cuthbert!” I shout.

“I _am_ Cuthbert.” His voice is insistent, but it is small enough for me to trample over it.

“Why take him? Why are you here? Is it an invasion? Is it how you reproduce?”

“No!” He scoots a little closer. The ravine narrows, but he does not extend his hand across it. “No, no, no. It’s true that we can breed with humans and not with ourselves, but those offspring are much more human than Fae. We are finite in number; bodies age and die; souls are reused. Ages ago, our kind grew curious, and we were able to link our space-time continuum with this one. Since then, they have run parallel. We interacted with the people here - there used to be more of you, and we would intermix. We became fond. When your Old Ones fractured time and space, the Manni used to beg for changelings, hoping to breed hybrid children with inhuman abilities to help them survive. You may have Faerie blood, yourself; although, I’m not familiar with your mother’s Manni line. But, things are different now. This continuum is not merely fractured - it is disintegrating. The world has moved on, and, soon, the Faerie Continuum must move on from it, too. This is a conservation project.”

“Why Cuthbert?” I press.

“He . . . I . . .” The real Cuthbert would not stumble on his words. “We,” he tries, “Cuthbert was born at midnight on the Vernal Equinox. That is one of the times when the barrier between your existence and ours is thin. Adult Fae may pass between the two contiguous continua at any time of day or year, but the journey is brutal. More than twice in one lifetime will ruin our bodies. For humans, more than once is deadly. For infants of either race, even one journey would be fatal at any time but when the barrier is thin. All changelings are conjured at such times.”

“It’s all luck,” I remember.

“Yes.”

“So, the real Cuthbert . . .”

“ _I_ am Cuthbert,” he repeats. “You have not met my doppelganger in your life. He's safe, and I’m a placeholder. My parents deserved their son; you and Roland deserved your friend. I’ll fill my place until I am no longer needed.”

“You’re nothing but a well-intentioned lie,” I interpret.

“I’m Cuthb. . .”

I cut him off. “And now that you’ve been compromised? I think it’s safe to say that we won’t need you anymore.”

He shudders, hurt, and closes up his mind. The mental gesture makes him shimmer in the dark - another Faerie quality he can’t always suppress, apparently. I think of him inside my mind the other night when I was floating and of my own body inside Saralinda’s and the changeling’s, later, inside mine, and nausea comes crashing down on me like a corroded brick jarred from the wall of a decaying building. Blackness swallows up my vision from the inside out.

Slim fingers are on my face: comforting, cool, just as they were last night when this man spent the whole night in my bed for the first time. That memory brings little comfort, now, but I feel somewhat stronger. I can see brown eyes again. My vision has returned; so has the changeling’s light.

“I’m too young to heal you fully,” he murmurs. “You must rest.” He pulls his hands away and stands. Again, the lamplight fades.

“Answer my questions first!” I slur. 

He crosses his arms. “If the benefits outweigh the risks, we may return to Faerie - alone or with a committed human partner.”

“As part of the conservation effort.”

“Yes.”

“And Sissy fucked up.” I can almost see her now: a refugee with no surviving human family . . . 

“We’re supposed to prepare!” the changeling explodes. He drops back into his chair and lowers his voice to a whisper. “We aren’t supposed to leave unless it’s inconspicuous.”

“Sissy had no family in Gilead,” I reason, unable to stop myself from speaking to him like I usually speak to Cuthbert when he comes to find me in the evening and I’m on the verge of working out a case. “She fell in love with Miriam and spirited her away. Because of the nature of their relationship, they kept the Bakers in the dark.”

The changeling is less forgiving. He pshaws. “They could have made any excuse.”

“So, Miriam knew they were going away?”

“We aren’t kidnappers or rapists, Al. We aren’t human. There are rules!”

“The real Cuthbert didn’t have a choice,” I remind him.

“Changelings are different,” he insists. “Our human counterparts are saved before their lives begin, and they are instantly replaced. I didn’t have a choice, either. Infant Fae are conjured from any available soul.”

Like a steaming kettle, over-full, my throat spews inadvertent laughter all over the room. “Poor you! Doomed to this existence with no control over your fate.”

“It’s not like that. Don’t you see? I’m Cuthbert.”

“Exactly! Your disappearance will never be inconspicuous!” 

I giggle again, punch drunk. Tears sting my eyes. The man who claims to be Cuthbert, for once, is unamused. His voice is soft and flat.

“I don’t plan to disappear. But, I've made preparations just in case.”

“Yes,” I agree, wiping my nose. I sober. “Where’s my letter, ‘Cuthbert?’”

My words must have been cutting him. He hisses, “You don't get one," and now I am bleeding, too. His smirk is the knife twisting in my wound. 

I clear my throat and change the subject. “So, Miriam went willingly, but she and Sissy didn’t make any excuse. When I came looking for her, the Lovelaces got scared and left, but they made preparations. Only the Bakers’ continued suspicion called attention to their disappearance.”

“Yes.”

“So, what about the mother and the girl? They were hardly a committed couple.”

“An accident, probably.” The changeling sighs. His thumb and forefinger are in his eyes again. His name keeps invading my mind. That’s Cuthbert sitting there. Cuthbert, Cuthbert, Cuthbert. He goes on, “Peter got scared when you came looking for Sissy. Simon and Noelle were ready to leave if the war came too close. Melanie wasn’t; she was just a kid. It’s . . . like your own ability. At puberty it intensified?”

“And became easier to control.”

Cuthbert nods. “Realization comes in gradually as our bodies mature. Our Faerie qualities begin to surface . . .”

“What are they?” I interrupt.

He nods again. “Night vision, you have seen. Elemental atmosphere manipulation. Enhanced strength. Very low level telepathy and intuition. A basic knowledge of the history of Faerie Kind. The ability to drain and restore energy - to kill or heal or induce sleep. That power grows exponentially throughout our lives. It’s very weak at first, unlike the ability to return to the Faerie Continuum, which comes upon us all at once.”

“And my ability?”

He smiles a little closed-lipped smile and shakes his head. “I wish I knew more. You may have Faerie blood; you may be a purely human variation. The descendents of humans and Fae don’t have Faerie qualities, exactly. We have extremely limited telepathy, and we are rarely empaths. Our pre- and post-cognition lacks detail.”

We are both freaks, then, and I'm no less isolated. “Your approximation of a human mind is flawed,” I spit.

His smile turns sad. “I know. I told you my telepathy is limited. But, I didn’t want to be closed off from you.”

“You didn’t want to be suspicious,” I correct.

“Among other things.”

“Tell me more about puberty. Tell me about sex.”

He swallows an embarrassed giggle. “Fae are tactile people,” he admits. “We seek partnership compulsively. In the Faerie Continuum, we would pursue our pleasure freely until we committed. When - if - such a thing happens, we become rather more . . . focused.”

“But you wouldn’t know about that.”

“Not first hand, no," he admits soberly. "I'm not committed. And I’m not sure what happened to Melanie and Grace, either, but I have a guess. You made them nervous; Peter’s worries made their fear much worse. After she found Mab’s, Melanie told her mother that she was a changeling, but Grace didn’t know about commitment. It’s intended for adults. In fear, she asks her little girl, ‘Will you always be mine?’ The girl commits. Then, in a panic, she - what were your words? - she ‘spirits them away.’”

“So will she _want_ her mother now?” I grimace.

“No indeed! She won’t 'want' anyone. Whatever sexuality she was beginning to develop will recede. I’m somewhat jealous. It’s very difficult for me to turn down sex or to go long without it.”

The understatement of the year! I'm not particularly sympathetic, but I'm curious: “He said you won't be welcome at the tavern anymore. Saralinda doesn't come to Castle Gilead. That guard. . .”

“I’ve made a break with all of them.”

“Will you go back to Roland, then?" The knowledge of their intimacy chafes me like a clumsy seam. My face contorts. I add: "If he will have you once he learns the truth.”

Cuthbert's lip twitches, but, this time, with his mind closed, I can't tell if that means he's hurt or angry or amused. "We're better as friends," he says. Then, he elaborates. "Roland does not really desire me, for all the love there is between us. Focusing on him would ultimately leave me pining, unfulfilled."

I want to hurt him once again by saying that's just how he made me feel, but he'd know I was being unfair. He made his desire for me clear - his recognition of our mutual desire - and I pushed him away. Still, he did have his whims - those moments of weakness when he 'overstepped.' "You're telling me that Roland could commit you," I reason and hurt myself instead.

"It's not impossible."

"And, since you are not lovers anymore, he could commit you platonically? Just like the girl and her mother?"

"It's not impossible," he says again.

"Then, you would spirit him away?" My voice squeaks like unoiled machinery.

He smirks. "No need to fear for Roland, Al. Well, not from me. He has a destiny. I can't see what it is, but I can see and feel that he is tied to this space-time continuum."

"Go back to Faerie yourself, then!" I urge. Remove temptation. Already, even in betrayal, my own tongue longs to offer to assuage his supernatural desires with more of those forbidden trysts.

He shakes his head. "No, Al. The people I love are all here. And there are plenty of limp rugs to keep me sane when want becomes unbearable. I've only a few scruples left. What's one more, gone? They like me, and I shant abuse them badly. Quite the contrary." He chuckles and looks down at where his slim right thumb absently strokes the smooth inside of his left wrist. He has a pulse there like a human man. He meets my eyes again. "But, it’s out of my hands. This is your case, Alain. Go on and send me back there if you think it’s for the best.”

I notice for the first time that he is unarmed. His gunbelts dangle from the coat rack near the door. The guns that I dropped in the tavern, however, are within reach on the bedside table. I lay my palm on one.

“You might be stuck as a changeling again.”

“Unlikely. How long since the last true equinox?”

“That’s not my field of study.”

“Years,” he informs me. “The world has . . .”

“Moved on,” I interrupt.

He continues: “Soon, Gilead will fall. Chaos will reign. This space-time continuum is falling apart.”

“So you said. You’d stay though, when you could be safe elsewhere? You’d stay for Roland?”

“Not only for Roland. I am not afraid to die.”

He reaches for me at last, covering my hand on my gun with his own. Together, we lift the gun and aim it at his face. The conjured lamplight dims as he withdraws his hand, and his pupils absorb his irises in full. There is a moon, so the night is not so black as Cuthbert’s eyes; even without dark vision I can see him well enough to shoot. 

We wait in interminable stillness.

“Sleep on it,” Bert whispers finally. “You’re paid up through the night.”


	10. Chapter 10

The second time I wake bright sunshine scalds my face. The landlord has been banging on the door: my time is up. There is a bedpan by the bed; I vomit into it then stumble past the innkeeper and out into the streets.

In the light of day, Bert’s story seems absurd. Miriam and her lover and the barkeep and the pianist and the cook and her daughter fled the city before Farson could come sack it. The paranoid proprietor drugged me, and Bert took me to Low Town to sleep it off and told me stories to amuse my addled mind. My gun trained on the man I've tried for so long not to love was but a figment of my doped, nightmare imagination. I could tell Roland all these things, but they are not the truth.

I visit the tailor’s shop first. Simon: born at midnight on the winter solstice. Then, I ask the soldier about his missing daughter: born at midday on the vernal equinox. 

“What if they were someplace safe?” I ask the grieving father.

“There is nowhere safe.”

“Not here. Do you believe in Faeries?” I send him to visit with the Lovelaces and Tinkers.

The Bakers I tell half the truth: Miriam has run off with her lover, Sissy. She left of her own accord, and they have passed beyond my jurisdiction.

"The Lovelaces?" They ask.

I lie. "Coincidence."

Head throbbing like an open wound, I plod my way back to the castle.

“Should I be worried?” 

Startled, I waver like the drunk I probably appear to be. I am a high born gunslinger; never before has the door guard dared address me. I turn around and recognize the man from Mabel’s - Mab’s. He does look worried, but I cannot touch his mind.

“It’s out of my hands.” If the changeling, Cuthbert, can defer the ultimate decision, so can I. I’ll do my duty and break Roland’s heart. Then, he will tell me what to do; it is his job.

The guard grimaces. He pulls off one of his gloves and offers a hand. “You look like you’ve had a hell of a night. I’m older than Allgood. Let me.”

I stare at his hand.

“Not old enough to help you without touching your skin,” he clarifies.

“He said he made a break with you.”

“He isn’t my concern.”

I nod and take his hand. My head clears further. I feel almost ordinary.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “I'll leave your name out of it.”

I don’t know his name, anyway. When I find Roland alone in his office and relay my story I also don't mention Saralinda. 

“They’re all fucking changelings!” I spit out when I am finished. “Faeries! Simon Lovelace, Melanie Ward, Sissy - whatever her name was - and . . .” I lose momentum and collapse into the visitor’s chair. “. . . Cuthbert.”

The incense of my fury has all burned away; now, I am only tired. 

Roland stands up slowly, and he locks the door. He likes to think he is a cold, logical being, a skeptic, but he believes me without question, and he’s devastated. Back in his chair, he is a sack of flour slumped against the tabletop.

“He’s still the Cuthbert we grew up with,” I find myself saying to comfort him. I find myself believing it. “I don’t think they mean us any harm. They’re running away from the war and taking the people they love with them. Bert says it’s a conservation project. He says our space-time continuum is falling apart. He says they can return to Faerie once - alone or with a committed human partner. He says . . . he says you have a destiny. He says he’s Cuthbert, and he doesn’t plan to go.”

Roland props his chin up on his thumbs and hides his mouth and nose under peaked fingertips. 

“But,” I admit, “he may have changed his mind. I don’t know where he is.”

Roland’s fingers un-steeple and interlace. Oddly, it strikes me that behind them he is smiling, though his eyes and thoughts are sad. “I do. He excused himself from duty to have breakfast with his parents. He said he would be in his quarters afterwards if I - if you or I - had need of him.”

The cannonball is back inside my throat. He’s waiting for me. He promised. 

“He's our Cuthbert." It is what Roland needs to hear. I need to hear it, too. “They mean no harm, and he is our Bert, and the other one is safe.”

“Safe,” Roland echoes. His memory bubbles again. “Take it this time,” he offers. “I didn’t think that it was relevant, but I was wrong.” 

I want to respond, but he lets loose the floodgates of his memory; my mind is overcome. 

This time, they’re naked and post coital, and I flush from jealousy and embarrassment and this young Roland’s post orgasmic heat. Bert’s body is warm and sweat sticky against mine - or Roland’s, rather - and I - he - we whine against Bert's flesh, “You will not ever leave me, will you, Cuthbert?” We are in Roland’s bedroom after the tragedy of Susan's death in Mejis - his childhood room before he moved into his suite. 

Bert stiffens, but his warm embrace continues. He whispers, “What is it you’re asking me, exactly?”

Roland shakes his head, rubbing his nose on Cuthbert’s skin.

“Roland,” Bert’s voice firms from almost vapor into sold jam. The seeds stick in his throat. “What exactly are you asking? It’s important.”

Roland pulls his face out of Bert’s neck. “Can you promise me that you won’t ever die?”

Cuthbert recovers some of his usual mirth. He rolls his eyes and bends his lips into a sympathetic smile. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Then can you promise me that you won’t die like her?”

“I can’t promise that, either Roland. But, how did she die? She died in love. There are worse things.” His smile turns encouraging.

Roland kisses it, but Bert doesn’t kiss back. He pulls away and touches Roland’s bottom lip.

“Roland, you’re not in love with me.”

“I love you,” Roland insists. He tries to kiss Cuthbert again, but Bert catches his chin.

“Yes. And I love you. And you can ask me to do anything, be anything. Just . . . know exactly what you want before you ask me. Please.”

Roland knows this is the end. Bert was the one who offered sex that first time, weeks ago, but he is right; Roland is not in love with him, and they both deserve better. “Alright,” Roland agrees. He wants a lot of things from Cuthbert, but mostly: “I just want you to be safe.”

“Consider it done,” Bert agrees. The side of his mouth quirks.

“I thought it was a joke.” The present Roland pulls me back out of his memory. Before I have a chance to comment, he goes on: “Al, what will happen?”

“Now? Today?”

Roland shakes his head. He offers his hand.

I have caught glimpses before, but I've never let myself drift far in this direction. Today, I take Roland’s hand and push.

If I like my own memories best, it is the visions of the future I like least. Unlike the solid comfort of my own experience, the future is an airy, often changeable affair, disorienting. Roland’s future is drenched in his emotions: isolation, sorrow he does not permit himself to feel. Cuthbert and I are not part of it, but there is blood. My blood is bitter tonic for Roland, but not so bitter as Bert’s tears or Bert’s blood all over his hands. He walks away and leaves him there. Roland takes his tonic, and he leaves him there, again and again and again.

I am not so accustomed to the taste. I choke. The world spins. Roland’s other hand comes up to steady my shoulder.

“The future always makes me dizzy,” I complain, swallowing bile. It is not a lie.

Roland’s hand is on my sweaty forehead now, a cool touch brushing the thick curls from my eyes. “I cry your pardon,” he whispers. “I understand. I’ll make up a report and put Mabel’s on notice. Give Cuthbert my love.” He kisses the spot on my forehead he cleared of my hair.

I find Cuthbert a sharply angled silhouette in one of his three windows. Knees raised, he perches on the windowsill. He meets my eyes when I come storming up the stairs, then looks away and leans upon his windward hand to stare directly down the high, sheer tower wall.

My blood roars like an ocean in my ears. There is a fluttering of birds’ wings somewhere high above me and then silence.

Finally, I break it. “What is it you see?”

“A very long drop,” Bert quips without turning his head. He swings one leg out of the window, then raises his hand to wave at someone far below. “I think Roland is there.” 

“Roland said he had reports to finish,” I inform him, skeptical. “He sends you his love.” 

“Does he?” Cuthbert glances back at me. He's not a perfect silhouette; the other windows in the tower let me see his eyes and nose, but the expression on his lips is hidden by his shoulder. “I wasn’t sure what to expect.”

“Cuthbert, I’m asking.”

Bert leans back on both his palms and lets me see all of his face, but he doesn’t pull his dangling leg back up onto the windowsill. “What are you asking, Alain?” 

I want to ask a lot of things - a lot more things than he divulged last night. “If I asked you to fall, would you be forced to?”

“Are you asking me to fall?” Bert’s mind is locked up tight.

“No,” I whisper. Seeing him with one leg out the window, I can scarcely stand the thought. 

His smile is like the first warm summer dawn after a rainy spring. He pulls his leg back in. “My answer is ‘no,’ also. You can’t force me to do anything I don’t agree to first.”

“But, if I asked . . . and you agreed . . .”

“You humans and your vagaries!” He laughs. “I might have fallen had you asked me to; that would have been my choice. But, you have said that isn’t what you want. I won’t be taking any other leaps.”

“If you’d said ‘yes,’ when Roland asked you not to leave him that would have committed you,” I reason, explaining, “He let me see the memory.”

Bert nods.

“It would have altered you and your relationship with him.” It’s not a question, but I still don’t understand.

“Somewhat. I told you last night.”

“You implied. I want a clearer explanation.”

Bert’s fingers are back in his eye sockets. “I think you know these aren’t the questions I was hoping for.”

“Answer them,” I insist.

He heaves a sigh and rolls his shoulders back against the stony window frame.

“I love Roland,” he tells me, peering briefly down the tower wall again. “It would not have changed much. He loves me, too. Commitment doesn’t happen without mutual affection. At that time, we had a sexual relationship. So, I would have focused on him, sexually. I would not have been able to enter the Faerie Continuum.”

“But . . . with a committed partner, you said.”

He nods again. “And, once committed, not without that partner. I told you Roland is off limits; he is central to this continuum’s timeline.”

“But you’re not?”

He shrugs. “Cuthbert Allgood was born at midnight on the Vernal Equinox. If he was off limits, then I would not be him. If he was important, his task is already done.”

I remember the blood. Bert’s loss and mine will affect Roland’s story more than any action either of us take. Would loss by choice be better than the vision that I saw?

Cuthbert turns away to look down the sheer tower wall towards the man that he thinks is Roland in the courtyard. “He could still commit me, platonically,” he reminds me. “I could encourage it.”

“No.” I’m quick to answer, and I’m quick to lunge forward. 

Bert looks up sharply. Our faces are so close together now. “It would make things much less complicated,” he suggests.

“No,” I object again. “It wouldn’t.” The thought of waiting years to die beside a chaste, untouchable Cuthbert has swelled yesterday's cannonball into a mighty war machine, and it is more than I can bear. I sigh. “Cuthbert, you said you weren’t a rapist or a kidnapper . . .”

"But I replaced your Cuthbert and seduced you. Are you sure you are not asking me to fall?" He musters half of a wry smile, but his traitorous fingers flirt along the window ledge.

"No!" I reply hastily, again. "I was wrong! I was wrong about so many things I didn't understand. But, I've slept on it, and I've spoken to Roland, and you _are_ my Cuthbert, and the other one is safe. And, I consented every time. I more than that. I asked, just like you wanted. Just like you needed me to."

The softness of those wide brown eyes - the inside of his mouth. 

"Roland sends his love," he echoes finally: a miner lost inside a cave of sadness, which my first words have only just penetrated. 

He glances briefly down one final time towards Roland in the courtyard. It _is_ him down there - I can sense his presence now. He is saying goodbye.

Bert's eyes have already returned to mine, but I still slip a finger underneath his chin. There's stubble on his warm skin that I couldn't see. Underneath, I feel the sharp bone of his almost human skull.

"He sends his love," I reinforce, "and he is waiting for his letter. I understand now why there wasn't one for me. Can you forgive me?”

Bert’s lips quirk. “For being human? I think I can manage.” 

The softness in his previous expression has departed, but I’ve always been attracted to his hard parts, too. 

“Any more questions, Al?” His smile has the keen tang of cherry wine.

“Just one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alain would like to be hard boiled, but it turns out he's all gooey inside.


End file.
